The Gorgeous Sev and I
sailed down the Thames
early one morning
just as the sun rose o’er Londinium.
It was our first hot date,
we fed each other grapes,
as we wafted south towards
the forests of Greenwich.
– ZULEIKA
A flotilla of barges left London Bridge
amidst much trumpeting fanfare, topped
and tailed by man-o’-wars and flanked
by cavalry outriders, who appeared
intermittently on the narrow paths
in between the foliage of the banks.
Severus sailed up ahead on the imperial barge,
long purple ribbons flapping
from the awning above
as he reclined on a couch and held court
with several senior sycophants
who sat fawning before him on the poop deck.
Going out with My Guy, I now realized,
meant there would be no splashy frolics
amongst the daisies while we gazed
into each other’s dewy mi’ amore eyes.
I would be nowhere near him, let alone
enjoy a good neck-twisting, jaw-aching,
lip-bruising, saliva-slurping snog.
Mistress Invisibilis had been assigned
a barge some distance behind,
with top-ranking wives who knew Felix well,
whose thinned raised eyebrows
and supercilious smirks begged the question:
How on earth did Illa Bella Negreeta!
manage to cadge a lift
with the imperial entourage
when the better half was off on an expeditio?
I was just working myself up to snap
at Valeria or Aemilia or to slap them, even,
when I clocked a young harpist sitting
in the V of the stern of his boat, wearing
a pastel-pink micro-mini
(usually the attire of ladies nocturnae,
excuse me) and exposing long shapely legs
right up to her crabby puny.
Her pale oval face, meanwhile, affected
the demure innocens of a Vestal Virgin,
A fire ignited in my toes, soared
through my body, devoured my intestines,
heart and vocal cords, until it reached
my brain, where it stayed, roaring.
The plucking bitch! I closed my eyes.
I visualized. She stands. A squall arises.
She loses balance, topples into the river,
reveals a pastel-pink batty pitted
with festering sores, and the Thames
(magically metamorphosed into the Nile)
is alive with water buffalo, alligators, hippos
and an extended family of stingrays.
How dare she encroach. Bloody Harpy!
I would have words with him – a decision
that sensibly died as soon as it was born.
Was he attracted to her?
Was I just a flingette?
Was to love someone also to fear rejection?
A-M-O-R. It was tattooed on the fingers
of drunken machistos who loitered
outside bars and wolf-whistled at cute
young chicks, whilst grabbing their dicks,
pursing their lips and gyrating their hips;
it was what Alba went on about so much
what I’d never heard from the mouth of Felix,
and what Venus yearned for. A-M-O-R.
In the words of noster maximus poeta, yeah,
Improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?
Oh, cruel love, to what extremes do you
not drive our human hearts?
I flung myself back on to clouds
of soft golden cushions, remembered
the nights crushed in his arms,
took a deep breath and calmed down.
The girls took it in turn to hold a peacock fan
over me, the sun, yet rising, could still
make my chalky face streak with charcoal.
We passed close to the riverbank, and
I stretched out my languid arms, brushed
weeping willow leaves through my fingers.
I saw the round mud huts
which I’d heard existed outside the city;
fields of cabbages, wheat, corn,
flocks of sheep grazing in fields,
wild horses galloping in the hills beyond.
I could breathe without fear of inhaling
human excrementum, or the acrid
clash of perfumes worn to annul it;
We passed farmers in brown sacking tunics,
steering oxen and wooden ploughs;
they looked up, mouths agape, heads
slowly swivelled as our water-borne
paraphernalia passed musically downstream.
I floated and rocked, as if in a cradle,
to the music of a wind chime which a slavette
held up at the prow, my silver Valentino
robe with yellow flowery borders
spread lightly about me like air. I was pastoral,
I was a water nymph, I was in the land of the gods,
I was a maiden composed of pure ether,
I was so fucked up to have feared all this.
Ghetto girl or what?
Thanks, Mops. Thanks, Pops.
One of Venus’s laconic gems popped
into my head. (She was so right.)
‘Parents are to blame for everyfink.
Everyfink, my dee-yah, everyfink.’
Alba’s voice jumped in too, ever the competitor:
‘It’s water. It’s a barge. It’s the sun. It’s green.
Don’t write an epic poem about it, Zee.’
I chuckled softly, wishing they were with.
We rounded a bend in the river, voices rose
everyone was standing. I rose, reluctantly,
looked dreamily to where they pointed,
squinting, the sun was now fierce,
and there it was – The Conqueror,
rising out of the tangled roof of forest,
a gargantuan spherical monument,
the likes of which the world west of Gaul
had not seen before. Surely it was one
of the wonders of the world, to stand
head and shoulders with the Parthenon
in Athens, the pyramids of ancient Nubia,
the Colosseum in Rome, embodying
the very ethos of empire: to conquer.
It was many storeys of stone high,
which had been quarried in deepest Kent
and transported upriver on barges; several
arched entrances circumnavigated its base,
blocked with people scrambling to get in.
Londinium was too small for such an edifice, so
the powers-that-be decided on Greenwich,
which would one day form
the southernmost boundary of the city,
from the River Fleet to the River Ravensbourne;
beyond that lay the marshy saltings
buildings, with a sign that announced
THE MITHRAS GLADIATORS TRAINING ACADEMIA.
A road cut through the forest from the north,
farmed land either side, carriages
and riders on horseback charged down it,
leaving clouds of dust and heat haze.
We moored to the sound of a heralding trumpet.
I was helped on to the banks,
lifted my skirts and was carried by sedan
over the mud. I had arrived.